For the last 6 years, the head of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology has been Rep. Ralph Hall, a right wing religious fundamentalist who denies the science of climate change. Now it’s time for Hall to step down, and to replace this anti-science nutjob, the Republican Party has picked … another anti-science nutjob.

On Tuesday afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced that the Republican Steering Committee had recommended Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) as the new chairman. The full House GOP caucus will vote on all chairmanships Wednesday and is expected to ratify the steering panel’s choices.

Smith, like many of his Republican colleagues, has expressed doubt that global warming is caused by human behavior. In 2009, he criticized the media for not airing enough “dissenting opinions” about climate change.

“The [ABC, NBC and CBS television] networks have shown a steady pattern of bias on climate change,” Smith said in a statement at the time. “During a six-month period, four out of five network news reports failed to acknowledge any dissenting opinions about global warming, according to a Business and Media Institute study. The networks should tell Americans the truth, rather than hide the facts.”

He also referred to environmentalists and others who warn about the seriousness of the issue as “global warming alarmists.”

I haven’t found any statements from Lamar Smith on the subject of evolution, but chances are very good that he’s a young earth creationist as well. Because that’s just how the GOP rolls.

After taking heat for naming zero women or minorities as committee chairmen in the next Congress, House Republican leadership today appointed Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., to serve as chairman of the House Administration Committee.

[...]

Still, the appointment appears to be purely political, since Miller, in her sixth term in office, doesn't even currently serve on the House Administration Committee. The Administration and Ethics committees are the only congressional committees to which the speaker can simply appoint someone.

[...]

Well yes, all committee chairmanships are "political", but in this case I think it is striking that the GOP in Congress, when left to their own, appointed all white men to head committees, and it took public outcry to move the John the Orange to execute one of his options in appointing a woman to a committee chair.

“The [ABC, NBC and CBS television] networks have shown a steady pattern of bias on climate change,” Smith said in a statement at the time. “During a six-month period, four out of five network news reports failed to acknowledge any dissenting opinions about global warming, according to a Business and Media Institute study. The networks should tell Americans the truth, rather than hide the facts.”

Nor have they allowed any dissenting opinions in the round versus flat earth debate, nor in the math based math versus faith based math debate.

Time for the FCC to start pulling licenses unless all sides are given an equal voice on these unproven theories of the far left.

But Wilson and MAC argue that broadcasters do need to adhere to the often-overlooked Zapple Doctrine, which requires them to give roughly equal time to major candidates and their supporters during the 60 days leading up to an election.

Wilson contends that the Zapple Doctrine protects the First Amendment rights of candidates, supporters and listeners by ensuring that all parties can be heard on the public airwaves.

What the monitors found in May shouldn’t shock anyone who’s tuned in to Sykes, Belling or their on-air colleagues:

On average, WISN gave Walker and his Republican supporters 77 minutes of free airtime each day, while giving Barrett and his supporters 1 minute of time daily.

On average, WTMJ gave Walker and his supporters 79 minutes of free airtime each day, while pro-Barrett messages got four seconds and Democrats received 56 seconds of coverage per day.

Based on the stations’ advertising costs, MAC estimated that the stations provided $15,000 to $30,000 of free airtime daily to Walker and his supporters, or $744,000 in the first 15 days of the recall election cycle. Barrett, on the other hand, received just $4,800 worth of airtime over 15 days.

When supporters of Democrats contacted the stations to ask for comparable time on the air under the Zapple Doctrine, WTMJ responded by saying that it did not have to provide it. WISN did not respond to their requests.

In addition to promoting Walker and his fellow Republicans, WISN also allowed guests to recruit pro-Walker volunteers while on the air.

After taking heat for naming zero women or minorities as committee chairmen in the next Congress, House Republican leadership today appointed Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., to serve as chairman of the House Administration Committee.

I've never heard of that committee. Did that used to be called the House Housekeeping Committee? Is she in charge of room service and vacuuming?

On April 23, 2006 CNET reported that Smith was introducing a bill that "would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers."[21] The move sparked a negative response among technology enthusiasts in opposition to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
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Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

On October 26, 2011, Smith introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), also known as SOPA.[32] The bill sought to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. SOPA faced significant opposition from internet freedom advocacy groups and web companies, and on January 15, 2012, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor cancelled a planned vote on the bill.[33][34][35]

Well yes, all committee chairmanships are "political", but in this case I think it is striking that the GOP in Congress, when left to their own, appointed all white men to head committees, and it took public outcry to move the John the Orange to execute one of his options in appointing a woman to a committee chair.

Perhaps he's trying to make up for granting the only waiver to his party's six-year term limit to committee chairmanships to Ryan.

... that sickness and disease are the result of fear, ignorance, or sin, and should be healed through prayer or introspection. Combined with a belief that the use of medicine is incompatible with Christian Science healing methods, this has led to outbreaks of preventable disease and a number of deaths.[3]

H.R. 1932, the “Keep our Communities Safe Act of 2011,” was introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) “to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide for extensions of detention of certain aliens ordered removed.” The bill would give the Department of Homeland Security greater power to detain undocumented immigrants for longer periods of time, in some cases indefinitely. It also makes the process of challenging detention significantly more difficult.

Seriously Tucker, you think America going over the cliff would give the Dems less power? If anything, it would give them more, with the GOP desperate to make a deal just to avoid their stock plunging deeper than the Marianas Trench.

The AP reported that State Judge Tim Kelley determined the voucher program, currently serving nearly 5,000 students in the state, improperly diverts funds allocated for the state's public schools to private ones. Kelley also said the program unconstitutionally diverts local tax funds to private schools.

This has been the one and only Republican plan since Obama was elected in 2008. "I hope he fails", farted GOP party mouthpiece Limbaugh right after the election.

Mitch McConnell agreed, saying the only GOP goal was to make Obama a one term president.

So with miserable assholes like these running the opposition party, get ready for them do everything they can to send the economy and financial markets into a nosedive, and to hell with everyone who isn't rich enough come out of it whole.

Keep in mind that this is only two days after the Louisiana voucher system was found to be in violation of federal desegregation laws as well. Yes, there are still private schools in Louisiana (as well as other southern states) who discriminate on the basis of race and religion - and the voucher system allows taxpayers to fund them.

The Hydroplate Theory is Walt Brown’s theory of the Global Flood. According to it, half of today’s ocean water lay deep underground—very deep. Ten miles deep. About 4400 years ago, the ten-mile-thick crust cracked open and let all that water out. It came out with enough force to throw vast amounts of water, rock and mud – one percent of the total weight of the Earth – into space. That water, rock and mud persist as comets, asteroids, and meteoroids.

Brown explains how comets formed in the micro-gravity of space. (Even a hand-sized rock, far enough away from any planet or moon, can become an orbital primary and make other, lighter-weight objects fall into it.) He also shows that such comets would fly off from earth in all directions. That’s why comets today have orbits going off in all directions. And Brown defies anyone to explain the Mercury ice (or the lunar or Martian ice, either) by any other theory of where comets came from. (Brown also knew about the Mercury ice twenty years ago, when NASA first suggested it.)

And the organic matter? Anything from germs to shrubs, that the escaping water, rock and mud carried with it. In fact, Lawrence, in the Science paper, says the ice melted when it crashed, then re-froze, with the dark organic layer on top. According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, it could do nothing else.

Brown confirmed today that the Mercury ice confirms his theory. That means the Mercury ice confirms creation, not abiogenesis or panspermia, as the origin of life.

Jindal said in a statement Friday afternoon that he would appeal the ruling.

In addition to the lawsuits, the program was criticized for letting students attend religious schools that teach Young Earth Creationism — the belief that the universe is no older than 10,000 years.

“Today’s ruling is wrong-headed and a travesty for parents across Louisiana who want nothing more than for their children to have an equal opportunity at receiving a great education,” Jindal said. “This ruling changes nothing for the students currently in the program. All along, we expected this to be decided by the Louisiana Supreme Court.”

Is this Jindal admitting that he planned to have this legal battle, and that he thinks he can win in the LSC?

Here's Lamar helping the Catholic Bishops conflate freedom of religion with the ability to prohibit birth control in employee health plans. Notice how he flubs it and calls them "anti-abortion drugs"

[Embedded content]

That's not a flub. The religious right wants to ban women's birth control medication on the basis that it prevents fertilization, which to them is the same thing as a third-trimester elective abortion.

Let me just say — this is going to sound radical, I don’t mean for it to be radical — but to me, the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.

Just judging from the videos at his own you tube site he's deeply embedded in the Paleo/Norquist wing and is full bore anti-immigrant. He's also one of those GOP members who keeps the whole party insulated from reality by constantly whining about how biased media is.

Many have noted that under success hating kenyan islamosocialist Barack Obama nominal corporate profits just set a new record. Uh so what. A dollar isn't worth what it used to be worth. Graphing nominal quantities is silly. The more interesting points is that the ratio of after tax corporate profits to GDP just set a new record (data only go back to 1947)

Notice also how corporate profits were almost as high under Truman as under Obama and then that socialist Eisenhower ruined eerything. Also notice that even the Eisenthower through Carter and Clinton ratio was much higher than the extraordinarily low ratio under Reagan and Bush Sr.

Internet service in all of Armenia was cut off for several hours when a 75-year old Georgian woman inadvertently cut the main service line between the two countries.

The woman was scavenging for scrap metal when she discovered the primary fiber-optic cable which runs through the two countries. Service went down when she apparently hacked into it with a shovel severing the line, officials said.

"She found the cable while collecting scrap metal and cut it with a view to stealing it," Georgian interior ministry spokesman Zura Gvenetadze told AFP.

The damage was apparently so severe that 90% of Armenian users lost access for nearly 12 hours while neighboring Georgia and some areas of Azerbajian were also affected.

Monitoring systems determined a break in the primary cable and a security team was immediately dispatched to investigate.

Christened the "spade-hacker" by the local media, authorities arrested the woman just outside the Georgian capitol of Tbilisi where they charged her for damaging property. If convicted, she could face three years in prison.

I'll wonder if has had second thoughts about that shit he said about how the Hispanics would vote for the GOP even if they were total jerk-offs about immigration. Then again he might not be smart enough to have second thoughts. :p

The minimum wage just does not sit well with people who think that the unrestricted free market is the answer to everything.

It does not sit well with people who somehow think that individuals and families with limited resources can negotiate on equal terms with large companies or even international, multi-million-dollar corporations.

And it does not sit well with people who think that our economy should be based on producing and selling cheap food and consumer goods 24/7.

Yep, Obama is the biggest failure in all of history when it comes to his leadership on radical socialism, frankly he is so bad at it that it should be embarrassing to the whole country. I mean what do you think the other Socialist leaders think of our President? They probably can't even stop laughing at what incompetent socialists we are, it is just mortifying to think about it.

Parole Board chairman: They've got a name for people like you H.I. That name is called "recidivism."
Parole Board member: Repeat offender!
Parole Board chairman: Not a pretty name, is it H.I.?
H.I.: No, sir. That's one bonehead name, but that ain't me any more.
Parole Board chairman: You're not just telling us what we want to hear?
H.I.: No, sir, no way.
Parole Board member: 'Cause we just want to hear the truth.
H.I.: Well, then I guess I am telling you what you want to hear.
Parole Board chairman: Boy, didn't we just tell you not to do that?
H.I.: Yes, sir.
Parole Board chairman: Okay, then.

Rationalwiki classifies Walt Brown's hydroplate "theory" as being in the Not Even Wrong category. The idea that underground water cold spew fast enough (25,000 mph or 11 km/s) to escape earth's gravitational field and then travel hundreds of the millions of miles to reach Mercury (a pinprick of a planet in space) defies all common sense, not to mention basic Newtonian mechanics.